Indonesia urges more training for pilots after Lion Air crash

Until now, public attention has focused mainly on potential maintenance problems including a faulty sensor for the ‘angle of attack’, a vital piece of data needed to help the aircraft fly at the right angle to the currents of air and prevent a stall.

Read | At doomed Indonesian flight’s helm, pilots may have been overwhelmed in seconds

Now the investigation’s focus appears to be expanding to the clarity of US-approved procedures to help pilots prevent the 737 MAX over-reacting to such a data loss, and methods for training them.

Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of Indonesia’s transportation safety committee of crash investigators (KNKT), said on Monday that Indonesian regulators would tighten training requirements as a result of the findings of the investigation so far.

A worker assists his colleague during the lift up of a damaged tyre from Indonesian forensic policemen stand beside a damaged tyre from the Lion Air flight JT610 jet, at Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta, Indonesia, November 5, 2018. (REUTERS/Beawiharta)

“We know, because this incident happened, we know we need additional training,” he said.

The comments focus attention on the contents of aircraft manuals and a conversion course allowing pilots of the previous generation of Boeing jet, the 737NG, to upgrade to the MAX. The manual had not covered how to handle a situation like the one that occurred in the crash, Soerjanto told reporters.

Lion Air officials said on Monday that they had followed a training regime approved by both US and European regulators. The approved training was restricted to three hours of computer-based training and a familiarisation flight, Lion Air Training Centre general manager Dibyo Soesilo said during a media tour of the centre on Monday.

The October  29 crash was the first accident involving the 737 MAX, an updated version of Boeing’s workhorse narrowbody jet that entered service last year.

CHECKLIST

Information recovered from the jet’s flight data recorder last week led the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to issue an emergency airworthiness directive urging airlines to update their flight manuals.

The directive warned pilots that a computer on the Boeing 737 MAX could lead to the plane being forced to descend sharply for up to 10 seconds even in manual flight, leading to potential difficulties in controlling the plane.

Pilots could stop this automated response by pressing two buttons if the system behaved unexpectedly, but questions have been raised about how well prepared they were for such an automatic reaction and how much time they had to respond.

Boeing did not respond immediately to a request for comment on the training programme.

Last week it said the fix for this type of event – known as a ‘runaway stabilizer’ – was covered by existing procedures.

Even though this problem was – according to investigators – not covered in the operating manual, pilots did have access to a checklist designed to turn off errant systems when the plane started nosing downwards at the wrong time, said Soejono, a Lion Air instructor who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

Experts say investigators will be examining whether the crew examined this checklist and if so whether they had time to cut off the automated nose-down system while flying at a relatively low altitude of 5,000 feet. Pilots on a previous flight are reported to have overcome a similar sensor problem.

To answer that question fully, investigators may need access to cockpit voice recordings thought to be hidden in the seabed.

A search for the jet’s missing cockpit voice recorder is continuing and could provide important information about human factors relating to the crash, Soerjanto said.